It was a cool and lovely morning, and a fresh invigorating breeze played over the mountain side, on which, though less than ten degrees removed from the equator, flourished the vegetation of northern climes. The rough and stony road wound on by a steep ascent over hill and dale—now skirting the extreme verge of a precipitous cliff—now dipping into the basin of some verdant hollow, whence, after traversing the pebbly course of a murmuring brook, it suddenly emerged into a succession of shady lanes, bounded by flowering hedge-rows.
The wild rose, the fern, the lantana, and the honeysuckle, smiled around a succession of highly cultivated terraces, into which the entire range was broken by banks supporting the soil; and on every eminence stood a cluster of conically-thatched houses, environed by green hedges, and partially embowered amid dark trees. As the troop passed on, the peasant abandoned his occupation in the field to gaze at the novel procession; whilst merry groups of hooded women, decked in scarlet and crimson, summoned by the renewal of martial strains, left their avocations in the hut to welcome the king’s guests with a shrill ziroleet, which rang from every hamlet. The leather petticoat of the wandering shepherdess was no longer to be seen. Birds warbled among the leafy groves, and throughout the rich landscape reigned an air of peace and plenty that could not fail to prove highly delightful after the recent weary pilgrimage across the hot desert.
At various turns of the road the prospect was rugged, wild, and beautiful. Aigibbi, the first Christian village of Efát, was soon revealed on the summit of a height, where, within an enclosure of thorns, rest the remains of a traveller, who not long before had closed his eyes on the threshold of the kingdom, a victim to the pestilential sky of the lowlands. Three principal ranges were next crossed in succession, severally intersected by rivulets which are all tributary to the Háwash, although the waters are for the most part absorbed before they reach that stream. Lastly, the view opened upon the wooded site of Ankóber, occupying a central position in a horse-shoe crescent of mountains, still high above, which enclose a magnificent amphitheatre of ten miles in diameter. This is clothed throughout with a splendidly varied and vigorous vegetation, and choked by minor abutments, converging towards its gorge on the confines of the Adel plains.
Here the journey was for the present to terminate, and, thanks to Abyssinian jealousy and suspicion, many days were yet to elapse ere the remaining height should be climbed to the capital of Shoa, now distant two hours’ walk. Three thousand feet above the level of Fárri stands the market-town of Alio Amba, upon the crest of a scarped prong formed by the confluence of two mountain streams. A Mohammadan population, not exceeding one thousand souls, the inmates of two hundred and fifty straggling houses, is chiefly composed of Adaïel, Argóbba, and merchants from Aussa and Hurrur; and among this motley community it had been ordained that the Embassy should halt that night.
Ascending by a steep stony path to an open spot, on which the weekly market is held, the escort fired a desultory salute; and whilst crowds of both sexes flocked to behold the white strangers, forming a double line, they indulged in the performance of the war-dance. Relieved occasionally by some of the younger braves who had earned distinctions during the last campaign, a veteran capered before the ranks with a drawn sword grasped between his teeth; and for the edification of the bystanders the notes of a martial song were powerfully poured forth in chorus from three hundred Christian throats.
The cone occupied by Alio Amba is only one of the thousand precipitous eminences into which the entire mountain side is broken on its junction with the plain. Swollen and foaming, the intersecting torrents appeared from the pinnacle like small threads of silver, twining and gliding far below amid green bushes and verdant fields to the great outlet, whence they escape to be soon lost on the desert sand. Together with a boundless prospect over the inhospitable tract beneath, countless villages now met the eye upon the entire intervening mountain side, and wherever the slope admitted of the plough being held, there cultivation flourished. Wheat, barley, Indian com, beans, peas, cotton, and oil plant, throve luxuriantly around every hamlet—the regularly marked fields mounting in terraces to the height of three or four thousand feet, and becoming in their boundaries gradually more and more indistinct, until totally lost on the shadowy green side of Mamrat, “The Mother of Grace.”
This towering peak, still shrouded in clouds when all was sunshine below, is clothed with a dense forest of timber, and at an elevation of some thirteen thousand feet above the sea, affords secure shelter to the treasures of the monarch, which have been amassing since the re-establishment of the kingdom, one hundred and fifty years since. Loza forms the apex of the opposite side of the crescent, and perched on its wooded summit is a monastery forming the temporary abode of Halloo Mulakoot, heir-apparent to the throne of Shoa. But by far the most interesting feature in the stern landscape is a conical hill, conspicuous from its isolated position, and rising amid dark groves of pine-like juniper, from a lofty serrated ridge. Hereon stands the stronghold of Góncho, the residence of Wulásma Mohammad, constructed over the state dungeon keep, in which, loaded with galling fetters, the three younger brothers of a Christian king—victims to a barbarous statute—have found a living tomb since the present accession, a period of thirty years!
After much needless detention in the market-place, exposed to the impertinent comments and rude gaze of the thronging populace, Ayto Kálama Work, a tall raw-boned man with a loose scrambling gait and a dead yellow eye, introduced himself as governor of the town. He condescended in person to conduct the British guests of his royal master to a mansion which had once boasted of himself as a tenant, but was now in the occupation of a fat old Moslem dame and her three daughters, whose respective appellatives being duly translated, proved worthy the days of Prince Cherry and Fairstar. Eve, Sweet-limes, and Sunbeam, all clothed alike in scarlet habiliments, vacated the premises with the utmost alacrity, and many good-humoured smiles; but owing to the length and difficulty of the road, that portion of the baggage most in request did not arrive until midnight—when, through the officious interference of Ayto Wolda Hana, whose garrulity had increased rather than abated, a new inventory of effects in charge of each principal of a village was to be penned by the royal scribe, and thus neither bedding nor food could be obtained.
The edifice so ostentatiously allotted for the accommodation of the party by him of the unpromising exterior, was of an elliptical form, about thirty feet in length by eighteen in breadth, and surrounded on every side by those tall rank weeds that delight to luxuriate in filth. Two undressed stakes supported a tottering grass thatch. Windows there were none. A long narrow aperture did duty for a door, and the walls, which met the roof at a distance of ten feet from the ground, were of the very worst description of wattle and dab—the former an assemblage of rotten reeds, and the latter decayed by time in a sufficiency of places to admit the light indispensable to a full development of the dirt and misery within.
In the principal of two apartments, a circular excavation in the floor surrounded by a parapet of clay, served as a stove. Heavy slabs of stone embedded in high mud pedestals, and used for grinding grain, engrossed one corner, and in another were piled heaps of old bullock hides in various stages of decomposition. Very buggy-looking bedsteads, equipped with a web of narrow thongs in lieu of cotton tape, assumed that air of discomfort which a broken or ill-adapted leg is so prone to impart. The narrow necks of divers earthen urn-shaped vessels containing mead, beer, and water, were stuffed with bunches of green leaves. Larger mud receptacles were filled with wheat, barley, and beans; and huge lumps of raw beef, with sundry bullocks’ heads, which were promiscuously strewed about, garnished the floor, the beds, and the walls, in every direction.